A fine piece, per usual, Mr Theodoracopulos!

As Sobran observed, Manhattan will absorb anyone who stays there too long.  Buckley never left.

Nothing authentically conservative could ever survive there.  NR included.

Taki’s salute to his friend is commendable. I find that despite my bitterness
toward WFB, I continue to admire his literary and polemical gifts, which were stupendous
What shocked was his appalling choice of friends in the world of neocon upstarts.

authentically conservatives are like real artists, who cares about such selflabeling?

I hope this string doesn’t get hijcked by the usual suspects.  One can always debate WFB’s choices in his later life.  Now seems to be neither the time nor place.  One cannot dispute that he was a man who lived life to the fullest. What more can needs to said?

An excellent tribute.  Let us never forget that what is done in public is seldom more than 10% of the whole story.  We wish others to be charitable to us, so it is only right to be charitable in return.

Truce.

I admit to having looked forward to every new addition of National Review at UW’s library when I was in school out there in the Great Pacific Northwest (I was too poor to buy the magazine on my own, and why bother - it was free at the library!)

I was proud that WFB opposed the War on [some] Drugs.  I could tell all the liberal-hippy chics on campus: “Hey, us conservatives don’t support the War on Drugs, haven’t you ever heard of William F Buckley?”

...if only his employees would have opposed the other, more destructive, wars…

In the end, I think we can all agree that WFB was a product of the New England Liberal Establishment, and did all he could to buck that Establishment.  He did a mighty fine job, considering.

@ Andrew Capp, Well put.

I grew up with a Czech father and family, one of the few who remained loyal to the Hussite traditionand the Czech Breheren church, who was constantly beating the bushes for agents of the Pope. Not surprisingly, the only thing thing that really disturbed me about WFBJr was his Catholic faith.

But Catholics not so disturbing as the “Israel First” Jews who have captured the hearts of the American Jewish Community, and brought the world to war with their demon ideology that imposes internatinal finace capitalism on the world at the point of gun, as a political ploy to hide their real agenda--to defend Israel.

That the neo-cons have taken over NR, is the stain on WFBJr’s legacy, sadly for those of us who worshiped him as our hero.

Hats off to your grandfather.

Mr. Taki....are you showin’ off for the neighbors again?(Gstaad in transition--there goes the neighbourhood...Now, you know how Plato felt...the greatest cry for help in human history)....so many enchanters...such little enchantment...I am confident that all the aspiring, drolling plebes on this site would dearly love.... some good tribune, enobling gossip ....Buckley, Galbraith etc...you know, the “way we were” Davos..before Davos. Burchardt had you nailed long before your Granddaddy got so suddenly noble...You & yours understand fully...that in Amerika...any-man can become any oligarch....and you & yours employ that insight...too, too well....Kudos on you Mr Taki...now let’s release those ambitious, opportunistic, “managerial” hounds...shall we?...Maybe someday you & Mr Hart would take the kiddies for lunch..and generously, gently explain...that courage is just a belief in immortality...nothin’ more...obviously, some people ain’t buyin’...adds up to identity as fetish, usually.

Taki, you truly are a class act.

Why the great silence abou Curtis
LeMay, Goldwater’s running mate.
He was as brutal as McCain and
WFB appeared to have no great exception. Is it not odd also that
WFB, a practicing Catholic, had such an indifference to the Vatican’s opposition to our
wars of aggression. The man was
an enigma, a broken reed.

Curtis LeMay was not Goldwater’s running mate.  It was instead New York congressman William Miller, whose obscurity was so complete that he once did one of those credit card commercials where people who were supposed to be well known but weren’t used a certain credit card.

Mr. Buck, Curtis LeMay was the running-mate of George Wallace in 1968.  Buckley came to oppose the war in Iraq (2003-).  The Vatican does not bind the conscience of its members on whether this or that war meets the requirements for being just.  The Vatican cannot bind consciences on that, because 1) not all the facts are available to the Church, 2) the Church is not competent to judge contingent secular matters (i.e. it can make categorical statements on the requirements for a just war and bind our consciences on that, but whether a given war meets the requirements is not something infallible magisterial authority can speak to).

Well, I happen to think that WFB’s finest time was when he ran for mayor of New York and then wrote a book about it.
In both endeavours he was intelligent and witty; the fact that John Lindsay was elected proves that he was right. Nobody with that many good ideas could ever hope to get elected.
Really, Bill, bike paths? To promote good health, reduce pollution and alleviate traffic congestion? In 1966?
etc etc
Of course he was ridiculed by the liberals…

Rarely can any man live an entirely consistent life. I prefer to remember WFB in his shining moments.  He and NR helped me a lot.  For that I revere his memory.  But there was an entirely consistent man, and his name is Murray Rothbard.  Murray never backstabbed anyone.

I have not read much of what Buckley wrote, but I can understand why he may have embraced the neo-cons in an effort to dissuade Russian propaganda. The neo-cons agenda, however, was deeper than just the downfall [temporary as it was] of the militaristic communist threat.

And he should have parted ways with them, back then. Does he regret his actions? Im sure he does. I regret many things in life, mostly because I was foolish in my decision.

Should I blame this man for his decision to embrace the neo-cons? No more than I can blame myself for the state of governance which we have today.

I feel guilty at what America has become, though I surely wasnt alive when much brought us to this point.
I suppose thats the sign of a caring and thoughtful man who feels remorse and dooes not rationalise his regrets away by claiming its a virtue to change ones mind in light of new facts. The man was regretful despite new facts which he could have used as crutches, but he did not.

And so, to Mr Buckley, Salud.

Some men aren’t made for war. You have to force it upon them. And so a large number of young men were shot by their fellow countrymen in WW II. The Russians alone are said to have killed 160,000 of their own soldiers. To remember/celebrate these killings as noblesse oblige is obscene.

I remember drinking plum brandy with Bill in Des Moines back in ’78. He was a terrific raconteur and could hold forth for hours at a time, despite having no particular knowledge or insight into a given subject. I also recall that he was a very fastidious dresser; even for the most casual of outings he would always present himself immaculately in his trademark two-piece, crimpolene, powder blue ensemble. He did hate pigeons with a vengeance though – I think it might have been related to a nasty incident in childhood. I recall him pelting peanuts at a flock in Washington Square early one morning. We shan’t see his like again. God bless you Bill.

The problem with friendships based upon enemies of enemies, is that one must then figure out what to do with your new friend once the enemy has left the stage. Loyalty and familiarity often intervene in this process and disguise the fact that your new friend is not a friend at all but simply a kind of caricature of the enemy one once had. These are difficult problems to resolve intelligently.

The neoconservatives are like an expensive and ugly date that outlives it’s usefulness once one sees it naked. Their crusading philosophy reads like a compendium of all the mistakes made by profligate statists in history. They will hoist themselves on their own petard soon enough and we will all be holding a whopper of a bill, not the least of which is to cover funeral expenses. When one’s services consist of a body count and a whopping bill, one runs out of victims soon enough. Perhaps , if there is any justice in this country, Guantanimo will be in its’ final throes when the neo-cons are finally seen for what they are and we can toss them in that house of ghosts and throw away the key.

Taki´s grandfather was a child of a tradition that has been virtually extinguished in America. Mencken termed the southern landowners who lost the Civil War the only aristocracy America ever possessed.  Ezra Pound found a country led by J.P. Morgan, who profited from the sale of defective rifles to the Union army, extremely distasteful.

British historian A.L. Rowse made the extremely pertinent observation about the British and their reaction to Hitler.  The accomodationists with Hitler were mostly men of industrial and financial backgrounds and did not have the hereditary sense of security of the state that Churchill, Eden and the Cecils had.  The Chamberlains did not have the toughness of the 18th century aristocracy as they were the end products of the ascendancy of upwardly striving Victorian middle class which was deeply inbred with humbug and high-mindedness.

Buckley along with his Manhattan friends define conservatism and civility strictly in terms of money.  They may have railed against communism, but lacked the courage and sense of sacrifice for their sons and themselves to confront this evil doctrine on the battlefield.

No person did more damage to the conservatism intellectual tradition than WFB. He didn’t just superficially harm conservatism, he rendered it wounds so deep that it might not ever recover from them.

Through his writings and leadership at National Review and especially through his PBS program Firing Line he managed to so mangle and twist conservative ideology that it ended up resembling almost the exact opposite of that espoused by true traditionalists like Robert Taft.

WFB’s ideology eventually became so dominant in the Republican Party that attacks against it were considered nothing less than blasphemy. He provided ready and willing access to those we know know as original neoconservatives. Virtually every facet of contemporary neo conservatism first revealed itself WFB’s approving presence. This includes the belief that Israel’s welfare should always trumps the interests of the USA.

Whatever intellectual honesty WFB might have had at one time was forever abandoned when he started to be seen regularly on PBS during his Firing Line Days. PBS had been always politically correct since the early days of its inception and this correctness was demanded of those who chose to work for it.

In a way what happened to WFB resembles what has more recently happened to Pat Buchanan. Both were forced to espouse viewpoints they might not have agreed with in order to keep in the good graces of their media overloads. Buchanan startling and bizarre support of Bush’s candidacy in 2004 should be seen as a prime example of the control that the mainstream media has over those who are foolhardy enough to thin they they can maintain their independence within in. Both Buckley and Buchanan both failed to appreciate the old adage about how those who supply the paycheck call the tune.

PS Watch for Buchanan to suddenly get religion start supporting the candidacy of his arch nemesis John McCain. Poor old Pat has probably already been told that he can’t represent the (very lucrative) conservative viewpoint on TV unless he supports the (faux) conservative candidate McCain.

WFB was a supporter of Nixon who eventually supported his impeachment. Buckley never called for the impeachment of Lil Bush. The bi-partisan clique in Congress are part of the Imperial dictatorship.

He mocked Rothbard and compared him to David Koresh in an obituary. But the best he could do with the Clinton-Bush-Cheney abomination is utter a regret about the war. I think he was a wonderful person and admire his devotion to his wife and family and the Catholic virtues that supports but I am saddened by his loss and saddened more by his betrayal and can but hope if he was younger he might have done more to save the country from what it has become.

It’s interesting that Taki’s Grandfather shot a rich coward for failing to serve his country in time of war but the vile pathological rich coward Republican son of George H W Bush is voted into the Presidency with the support and applause of mainstream Republican America.

Rich cowards rush out of college to loot pension funds on Wall Street while women and poor peoples sons fight in Iraq. The cowards claim they are doing their bit in the war by getting rich.

WFB and the neo-cons running both parties are set to secure the White House another 4 years. Cry the beloved country.

“ Buchanan startling and bizarre support of Bush’s candidacy in 2004 should be seen as a prime example of the control that the mainstream media has over those who are foolhardy enough to thin they they can maintain their independence within in. “

But Buchanan made a reasoned case why Kerry would have been worse than Bush.  Buchanan is not a one- or even a tw-issue ideologue.  Peroutka had no chance, and none of the other candidates were conservative.  Bush was conservative on God, guns, gays, and the courts.  Perfect, no, compromised, sure, but Kerry was absolutely liberal on all these things.  I still don’t see how *any* of the self-styled conservatives at American Conservative coul possibly have supported Nader or Kerry.  Buchanan had some sense and said, “Uh, why support true-blue liberals over less liberal candidates like Bush?”

Plus, Bush in his second term fired many of the neocons.  Chances are that someone like Kerry would have needed to bolster his pro-Israeli bona fides by hiring more neocons and bombing more countries, as Obama has threatened to bomb Pakistan.  Kerry deserved to lose, and Buchanan helped.  It is not all that surprising.  Buchanan supported Nixon in ‘68, he didn’t support Wallace.  How is it surprising that a man who is a native of D.C. and who has worked for three presidents is a man of the party and the “Establishment”?  Give him some credit:  on MSNBC Tucker Carlson supports Ron Paul openly.  Buchanan simply is not a Paulian-type libertarian.  Buchanan liked Tancredo, then Romney.

Re: Pat Buchanan

Buchanan is not a one issue guy, nor even a one person guy.

The PB you read in his books and American Conservative is not close to the PB seen and heard on his MSM performances.

The MSM Buchanan is a neutered version of a conservative, apparently warned against proselytizing toward the paleoconservative cause, yet strangely, he is seldom heard to utter a disparaging word against the neocons that he so devoutly criticizes in print.

Buchanan is not the first and will surely not be the last to succumb to the lucre of the Beltway, but for a guy reputedly pretty tough in real life, it is a singular disappointment to witness.

Where, oh where is the PB found on the pages of the American Conservative and the old days on Crossfire?

Re: WFB/Taki

Taki is nothing if not loyal and magnanimous toward his friends and this brief epistle is demonstrative of this trait.

Good piece Taki.
Me by the way I began to deeply dislike the neocons when I saw Bush holding hands with the Saudi-Boss.
(I don´t call that thug a king).

Accurate summary of the moral worth of the Modernist Predator Capitalists and Predator Bankers, John, as exemplified by Dubya Bush.  However, the Modernists generally are at present politically and financially dominant in every Western country, and included in their ranks would be Modernist Leftists, Modernist Centrist, and Modernist Rightists.  Here in the good old USA, though, the reign of the Modernists--believe it or not--will soon be drawing to a close.  How so?  It will because the Modernist American elites--Left, Center, and Right--have used their political dominance of the state to financially loot the nation and milk it bone dry, hollowing the once productive American economy out in the looting process and leaving this country a flimsy husk of insolvency as the country is drowing in debt, both public and private.  As presumably you are aware, John, the final financial unraveling of the country’s economy that began in late June with Bear Stearns on Wall Street continues unabated and is even accelerating.  Both the criminal Dubya and the oleaginous ranks in the Congress clearly are in outright denial of reality, as are the hacks of both of the criminal mainstream political parties and the mainstream “bought” U.S. mass media.

Denials all round, then, because of course all of them jointly being the source of the financial and economic destruction of the American economy as they undoubtedly have been over the past generaltion, none of them at this juncture can figure out what the hell they can do to avert the crash landing.  It was utterly predictable that their recourse would be to attempt to print and emit new liquidity to “buy their way” out of the looming crash landing.  That’s what they have been doing for a century now.  They seem incapable of realizing that the problem is not one of liquidity but instead of insolvency.

Once the Modernist debt-based economy has crash landed (here in the U.S., over in Europe and in Asia, etc.) and the peoples of all countries find themselves viciously mired in a mind-boggling financial-economic depression, the people will turn with fury on the Modernists leaders and get rid of them.  It will not be a pretty time for anyone, least of all the Modernist thugs and blood-suckers themselves.

The presently running “political side show” as various Modernist wannabes jockey to succeed Dubya and Darth Cheney is precisely that--a distracting side show that will have no real meaning as the financial tsunami brings in economic perdition and financial ruin nationwide and elsewhere around the world.  In truth, the Modernist political elites will be seen to be an irrelevancy and simply swept aside by the rush of calamitous events and financial chaos.  The long era of fiat money and, more lately, pseudo-assets is coming to a close.  The Modernists in their utter materialism and intemperate avarice have eaten even the seed corn, and as always the middle and working classes will be left holding the bag.

One cannot know in any detail what will come to replace the Modernists--too many contingencies.  But it seems obvious to me that whatever comes, it will most assuredly not be “business as usual.” McCain lusting for a 100-year war, indeed!  He’s living in a dreamworld.

@ Ravis

War is obscene.Two of my uncles,"poor farm boys”, served on the Albanian front. I’m quite certain the experience did not come naturally to them.

@Franz K
I don’t have that many years left but I fret for my Grand Daughter and nieces. They will face a bankrupt nation. I can but hope the youngsters can clean up the mess left them and trust in providence and God’s mercy. 

To change masters is not to be free. – Jose Marti y Perez (1853-1895)

@Expat Greek

Who gave the state the right to shoot cowards? That’s a crime against humanity. Period. Why should Taki’s grandfather and his ruling class decide who lives and dies? Noblesse oblige my ass.

To Franz K( there is hope...but, not for us)...I hear you like a brother...but, due to the Buckley’s of this world...You got it ass backwards...The Emperors got all their clothes...and yours & mine as well...when the reckoning comes… THEY will be just fine...whereas, you & me are toast...Pox Amerikan debt & regard...is not held by Amerikans any more...it is held by “provincial” central banks....Sorry FDR’s..we don’t owe it to ourselves any more....anyone with an IQ above that of a plant… should be able to extract the full meaning of this development....foreclosed, evicted, vacated...Simply, we are no longer “neccessary”....Checkmate, those that turned those lights on...can turn ‘em off...for similiarly expedient and advantageous reasons.

@ ravis
Is that not the very point, though? At a time when the nation was fighting, quite literally, for its survival, was it not the obligation of every man to do his duty? Was this unfortunate man’s life worth more than the lives of the others at the front?

Taki’s grandfather had no choice under the circumstances. To have spared the man’s life would have been an arbitrary exercise of power. One can only imagine the horror with which he condemned the man to death.

@Expat Greek

As a judge, I would have found the fellow guilty and immediately given him the choice: firing squad in the morning or going to the front line with orders that he be kept there for the duration of the war. I’m sure his fellow countrymen would have kept an eye on him. That would have given him the opportunity of redeeming himself or not.

“The MSM Buchanan is a neutered version of a conservative, apparently warned against proselytizing toward the paleoconservative cause, yet strangely, he is seldom heard to utter a disparaging word against the neocons that he so devoutly criticizes in print.”

There is more to politics than neoconservatism, though.  Often on MSNBC, Buchanan is talkiang about whether Hillary or Obama will win the next primary.  That’s simply the issue that day, and he’s the commentator How is he supposed to rail against neocons then?  He talks to time to time about how a third party, pitchfork-style candidate would do.

If anyone is interested in Pat Buchanan the Paleo on TV, they should watch the McLaughlin Group, which is usually on PBS stations.  If they don’t get that on the local PBS station, they can go to the McLaughlin Group website and either read the transcript or listen to the audio or watch the streaming video, all for free. 

On that program Pat is much more pointed which is also made possible by the questions Dr. McLaughlin asks and the fact that the program format is designed to encourage dispute.

John, there are no guarantees in this world.  If your granddaughter and neices have been well reared and have their feet on the ground, they will likely do all right and survive.

Jim, I do believe that you and I see eye-to-eye on the fundamentals.  Where I think we differ is that, when the dust settles a couple years down the road, the Modernist Predator Bankers and Predator Capitalists in my view will not by and large emerge from the developing financial tsunami untouched and unscathed.  They won’t because all modern fiat currencies and all fiat currency-demoninated assets will be found to be worthless, cute pieces of paper that will then have no more market value than old Tsarist bonds or Confederate paper money do.

Some, a relative few of the Rich and the Super-Rich will likely weather the storm relatively intact--those that recently and presently have had the wit to exchange at least some of their declining-value fiat currency for gold and silver bullion (and taken physical possession of it).  But most won’t have done that, and their bloated personal fortunes will be wiped out along with the mini-stakes of the middle classes.  (The working classes of course have no stakes--just debts.)

Acts have consequences--always.  By the early 20th century all of the Western powers had foolishly enshrined central banks (the U.S. in 1913 being the last, save Imperial Russia) and given the Money Power--the Predator Bankers--a legally enacted monopoly over the issuance of currency and credit.  Despite the Great War of 1914-1918 and the Great Depression of 1929-1941 (and actually because of both) the Modernist politicians at the bankers’ urging then effectively did away with the gold bar standard and entered into a criminal compact with the Predator Bankers that turned curriencies into fiat money, meaning of course that the fiat (paper) money was backed by nothing--except the credulity of the people that it was somehow a ‘store of value’ anyway.  The Predator Banker foxes were put in charge of the hen house, in other words.  Predictably they inflated the paper money supply forthwith, and they’ve never looked back.  (My Libertarian friends tell me that the U.S. dollar today is worth less than 1/50th of the U.S. dollar of 1910.)

Then the Wall Street practitioners of financial legerdermain, having seen that ‘pretend-money’ fiat currency had “worked” just fine for nearly a century, hit on a new scheme of “securitizing” debts (mortgages, stocks, bonds--and so-called “derivatives") that straightaway predictably consequented in the endless creation of pseudo-asset “investments” that nominally had saleable market value but which in fact were worth nothing at all.  The financial industry pirates loved this scheme because of course as the ‘middle men’ of the deals they got to clip their commission fee at the time the individual transactions took place--and speculative “irrational exuberance” moved center stage--worldwide, with eventual consquences put in train that have become evident since early last summer in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.  It’s best to think of this whole tissue of speculative financial skullduggery over the past 15 to 20 years as one gigantic fraudulent Ponzi scheme--and as always transpires with such schemes, in due course “Pop goes the weasel.” To review, historically first pretend-money was ginned up, and then pretend-asset investments were ginned up, with longer-term consequences that are only now coming to the surface.  Consider that the notional valuation of the international “derivatives” market presently exceeds $400 trillion, and one gets the picture.  Forget “irrational exuberance” (Greenspan is a great kidder) and think “speculative insanity.”

Even if the dominant Busheviks are prepared to nuke the entire world, the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency is visibly dying.  When that is dead, so will be the jerry-rigged, debt-denominated, Modernist American financial “system.” The American consumers as a group will have to begin to pay for the imported goods they want to buy.  But the U.S.--its economic superstructure, its banks, its dwindling manufacturing base, its government, and its people--are insolvent, financially busted.  Something’s got to give, and it will predictably be the American standard of living.  Dame Poverty, as we Americans are going to learn the hard way, is a harsh mistress.  Imports will stop coming, and our country is going to have to forget ‘the political fixes’ and get back to work.  For of course creaturely appetites do not constitute moral or material entitlement.

The implosion and collapse of the bloated Modernist financial system will collapse the individual fortunes of all of the parasitic financial joyriders and corrupt Modernist political elites who shepherded it and profited from it.  Can we say Revolution?

(The ideological Modernist Leftists mistakenly think it will become “their time.” They will be proved wrong.  All of the Modernist Ideologies, from Right to Left, will have been found wanting, to put it mildly.)

No doubt the neo-Fascist Plutocratic Modernist Rightists (Busheviks, Neocons, etc.) would gladly institute a Right-wing military dictatorship.  The Busheviks have been having a dress rehersal of doing exactly that ever since 9/11/01.  But the reality will be that they don’t begin to have sufficient ‘boots on the ground’ to actually pull that off.  They may well try, and an awful lot of people will get hurt--but they will fail.  They lack the military resources and boots on the ground to rule dictatorially by divine-right decree.  If history can be our guide, if they attempt a coup d’etat anyway (which out of sheer desperation they might), it will be that attempt that will lead to their condign terminal punishment.

The final point I think needs to be emphasized, Jim, is that when the financial and economic basis of Modernist countries’ pseudo-prosperity implodes and collapses, the paper fortunes of those who at present on paper are billionaires and multi-billionaires will collapse, too.  A receding tide lowers all boats if you will, including the mega-yachts of the Super-Rich fraudsters.  The Modernist Rich and Super-Rich in their horrible consuming avarice have consumed everthing, even the erstwhile financial seed corn.  One cannot burn down one’s house, collect the insurance, and then still retain that house to live in.

As I said previously, I do not know in detail what will replacement the collapsing criminal Modernist regimes, but whatever it might be, it cannot and will not be “more of the same.” There will be no basis for more of the same.  The fat lady is going to sing her heart out.

To Mr Franz K::::once again, my thoughts & prayers are with you...sadly, however, me thinks that the first move these murderin’ gnostic bastards will make… is to “pre-emptively” cut the dear ole “fat lady’s” sweet heart out....these pricks see the Mystery from the “outside"(not within) and attack it like an unrelenting virus....their suffocating “cosmological panic” is a true fever brought on by a genuine, self-attending belief in a unifying materialism(literalism is always at war with metaphor)...they don’t get it & that’s what sends them into “their rage”....no faith, no trust, no courage....just “infallible intoxications and superstitions”, fear, loathing and cowardice....Plato’s idea that being(non-light producing...rather, light becoming) needs to be “turned to” light...as opposed to “turns to” light”....was a terrifying heads-up of the “clear & present” danger of this vast psyche(illogical) disorder....amazingly, the healthy sensuousness of the Nazarene wasn’t picked up or celebrated by anybody...May the Holy Spirit be with us all...real, real soon..."Forgive them, for they know not what they do”....and forgive us for...under that condition//circumstance...lettin’ ‘em do it anyway...Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa....Amen

Thank you Mr. T for your thoughts on WFB Jr. I have no personal acquaintenance with him other than (1) I was one of a gaggle of teenage republicans and YAFers that he allowed into his estate in Sharon to meet Barry Goldwater, and (2) I occasionally served the B. clan at a store in Stamford that the family patronized. Contrary to the previous comment, WFB was almost always dressed casually in extremely well-worn clothes. 

Thanks Mr. B for providing an ideological island for young people in the sea of liberal orthodoxy of the 60s and 70s. I’ll put on my “don’t let them immanentize the eschaton” button tonight in your honor.

To all you Buckley “acolytes” out there....I have just finished reading that Henry Kissinger will give one of the two eulogies at Buckley’s memorial on April 4 at St Patrick’s. His son Christopher will give the other.

Your continuing warm regard for Mr Buckley must now be considered as just another extraordinary example of God’s inexhaustible mercy....Mr Buckley devoted his entire life to making fools of you...and with this final gesture, insists on egregiously mocking any last remnant of decency & dignity that you may still possess or aspire towards...Mr Buckley displays his incredible, instinctive ability to throw shit...even from the grave....Thus, despite all the aggessive degradation that you have suffered at his hands… on all matters sacred....You, dear children, are still with him....and still “with us”. Now, that’s real forgiveness, indeed.

Taki, you have my sincere condolences.  Why your columns attract the tinfoil-hat types, I cannot say, but the amount of rosebush fertilizer raked over here and continually sniffed and fought over is astonishing.